Free Republic

On Thursday, CIA Chief William Burns gave his first public speech as director at the Georgia Institute of Technology addressing the dual threat of China and Russia. Burns said Chinese President Xi Jinping is “a silent partner” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “aggression” in Ukraine, warning that China poses the “greatest challenge” and “most profound test” that the agency has ever faced. KX News has covered the State Investment Board’s efforts to entirely divest from Russia, but what about Russia’s “silent partner,” China? The SIB has 69 investments in China that span a wide range of industries throughout the country....

News AnalysisAmericans and allies are too dependent on China tech, as demonstrated by recent revelations that our Chinese-manufactured credit card machines are sending data back to China for no good reason.The U.S. Treasury Department says that millions of Chinese point-of-sale (POS) devices, the credit card machines found at check-out counters, could be sending customer data back to China for no good reason.Treasury Department lab tests show that the data is encrypted and sent to unknown third parties in China. The transmissions are “superfluous to normal payment transaction processing,” according to a letter from the Treasury’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical...